Wait a minute or
three while the files load. Game is ready when it says "Ready to Start New
Game." To Play: FIRST CLICK ON THE GAME AREA . . . and then press S.

Main Controls.S starts game.Left/Right Arrows rotate the ship. (Hold down for continuous
rotation.) Spacebar fires the ship's cannon. (Hold down for continous shooting.
If the max number of bullets are active, firing again
removes the oldest bullet).H jumps ship through hyperspace to a new location and makes it
temporarily invulnerable.Other Controls.Up/Down Arrows thrust the ship forward and backwards (use sparingly).B toggles between a (default) black background and a white background.C toggles the collision feature of having the asteroids bounce off each
other.G toggles on a "Godmode" which makes your ship invulnerable.D toggles graphics detail (asteroid fill and stars).M toggles sound muting.P pauses game.R toggles between round world and square world.W toggles between the (default) screenwrap mode and a
bouncing-off-the-edges mode.

How To Play the
Game.

Click on the game area and press S. Rotate ship with Left/Right
arrow keys, shoot with the spacebar. Generally Up/Down key thrusting is a mistake as
then you lose control of the ship.

You can hold the rotate and shoot keys down for continous rotation or shooting.
If you do both at the same time, you'll see a little "whip" of bullets coming
out of your ship, but the whip is of a fixed length as the oldest bullet keeps being
replaced by the newest bullet. Release the spacebar now and then to send a flock of
bullets out towards the asteroids.

The asteroids run away from the bullets. They only "see" bullets that
are currently getting closer to them, also the bullets have to be within a half-screen
distance. The asteroids don't "see" around the wrap. The asteroids
bounce off each other. It's hard to shoot the last asteroid or two. You need
to wait till it ventures close to you and then blast it. Or you can
"corner" it by turning off the wrap.

The biggest threat is the UFOs and their missiles. As you reach higher score
levels, a UFO will be born and make a number of passes across the screen, firing a missile
at you each time. The missiles guide themselves towards you, so it's hard to run
away from them. There are two ways to handle a missile: (1) Press H for hyperspace,
and the missile will miss you. In the current implementation there is no limit
on the number of times you can use H. (2) Or brace yourself and aim very carefully
at the missile and shoot it. They're hard to hit because they're small, but it can
be done. In either case, if you have a second to think you should try and shoot the UFO
before it fires another missile.

The Asteroids Alive
Applet

Asteroids Alive is based on an Asteroids Java applet written by Mike Hall. The presently
revised form is copyright (c) Mike Hall 1998 and copyright (c) Rudy Rucker 1999. See
the License Agreement on Mike Hall's
Asteroids for further information. The orignal applet is running there, and
you can dowload Mike Hall's source and executable from here as well. You can view or
download the Asteroids Alive code from Rucker's
Asteroids Alive.

Rudy Rucker used Hall's Asteroids as an example of some exciting Java code to work on
in his two Fall, 1999, sections of CS 151: Object Oriented Programming at SJSU.
During this course Rucker put the code into a more object-oriented form and added some new
features including:

Toggle between (traditional) screenwrap or having the objects bounce off the
screen borders.

Asteroids avoid the bullets now. The algorithm involves flying away from the
closest bullet, if any, whose distance from you is presently decreasing. Bullets
more than half a screen away are ignored.

Asteroids bounce off each other in momentum-conserving energy-conserving
collisions. The mass of these flat asteroids is thought of as proportional to the
cube of their radius.